Thomas Tuchel was working as a waiter in a cocktail bar when Ralf Rangnick picked him up, shook him up and turned him around and turned him into someone new.
And, with apologies to The Human League, if that all sounds far too sentimental to be true, too much of a neat coincidence to build up to Sunday's clash of Chelsea manager against new interim Manchester United manager, it is pretty much what happened, according to Tuchel.
He was an angry young man who felt betrayed by football as he waited tables at the Radio Bar in Stuttgart, a washed-up pro at 24 with a dodgy knee cartilage when Rangnick called him back into football as an apprentice youth coach.